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Monday, August 22, 2016

Dungeons and Dragons has been an obsession of mine ever
since I actually got more than one friend. The unfortunate thing about the game
is that it’s the sort of thing a player has to learn by doing. Doing,
furthermore, with people who already know what they’re doing. It’s hard to sit
down and just read the book, the rules being way too complicated to really
fathom in a theoretical form.

In my late group, I had my complaints, as I’m sure all do.
But towards the end, the experience was overwhelmed by grievances with little positives
to make up for it. Part of the problem was our Dungeon Master, a man with the
body of a stereotypical thirty-year-old nerd and the mind of a stereotypical
ten-year-old boy.

Now, I must clarify right here and now that I am judging him. I judge him because I’m
bitter, but

I do not necessarily judge others for what I judge him. It
is that special brand of judging that we do when we want to be judgmental and
does not always apply to others. Certainly not ourselves.

Anyway, needless to say, the game had its problems. And part
of the problem stemmed from his refusal to let anyone else DM. Of course, he
was far too passive-aggressive for an actual argument, so instead he’d intentionally
mess with the game as much as he could under the guise of “playing his
character.”

Which meant that for six hours once a week for over three
years, I was face level with this man’s improv’d psyche. But I have a lot to
thank him for; it was a direct view into the writer’s mind, uncensored,
unedited, too quick (and egotistical) for there to be any room to hide
motivation.

Over the years, from his mistakes, I learned several
important things about how to deal with an audience.

1. Treating readers
like they’ll be hostile will make them hostile.

His games were successful because no one tried to make them
fail. The group pandered to his fantasizes, accepted what he threw at them, and
hardly ever attempted to fight against the grievous wrongs he deliberately punished
them with.

Once upon a time a fellow member attempted to DM a game. Not
only did she have to contend with Mr. Dungeon Master himself, but the rest of
the group, because unlike their respect for our Long Living King, they thought
she was an idiot.

The story began with everyone in the town disappearing. Mr.
DM robs a bank. The game lasted only a few weeks.

After the woman quit, Mr. DM took charge again. He started
it off with everyone from the town disappearing. No one robbed a bank.

Now, of course, if called on it, he would claim it was a
matter of skill, not the power of a friendly versus hostile audience.

Yet, he seemed
terrified of what would happen if we did, in fact, become hostile. He would
make super powerful NPCs to stop and lecture people from doing what they
wanted, his fear that they would destroy the game by, oh say, robbing a bank.
When he didn’t understand a the player’s motivation in doing something like
taking a useless but entertaining object from a treasure split, he would assume
it was sabotage and punish them.

The more afraid he became of his own medicine, the worse he
got. People started abandoning the game. After years and years of playing
together (the group having formed long before I got there), these childhood
friends started to hate each other.

They didn’t quit when there were just overbearing Christian
overtones or unbalanced power gaming or favoritism or passive-aggressive
punishments. Those were there since I first came. The real issue came from the “narrator’s”
defensive hostility towards his audience.

HOW THIS AFFECTS WRITING

Of course, being treated like a traitor as a player is much
different than being looked at like an idiot as a reader. Yet, there are things
that we can take from it.

A narrator behaving like the audience is the enemy could be
funny—as long as the audience perceives it as intentional. However, sincerely
treating the reader she’s trying to hate the story will lead to an undesirable
conflict, that the reader will, of course, side with herself on.

If the writer constantly explains the joke, or prematurely
rationalizes a character’s actions, or gives the attitude that he doesn’t trust
the reader to understand, be patient, or see the world like he does, she’s not
going to enjoy herself. Over-explanation or an insecure condescension never
reads well.

2. The need for a
balance of satisfaction and frustration.

The players had to walk for a “year”. Our town’s wizard was
dead, we were low level, and even when we came up with ways to teleport, Mr. DM
told us it wouldn’t work. There were no towns in between ours and the next,
and, for some reason, we had absolutely no way of contacting anyone outside of
that singular wizard. So, when the inevitable disaster happened, we lynched the
town leaders for not thinking ahead and left.

It was pretty boring. We were being controlled by bossy
NPCs, we couldn’t buy any items, the game balance was so skewed that bonuses
from leveling up meant nothing, and the only goals we could make for ourselves
was to get to where we were headed. About three months of real time later, we
arrived.

And a giant beast walked by and destroyed the whole town.

What was strange is the actual joy that seeing the city’s
skyline had for us. The players were actually rejoicing. We truly, honestly
felt the accomplishment. We were proud and relieved. There was a catharsis,
there was an end. And before we could even see the fruits of our labor, he tore
it away from us.

I stopped playing that very game.

HOW THIS AFFECTS WRITING

Like regular stories, this frustration directly created that
sudden joy. For such a long time we didn’t get what we wanted that we it
actually came, it was a greater pleasure than it ever would have been if it’d
been easy. Refusing to give people what they want—the lovers together, an
answer to a question, the crap beaten out the villain—will make it all the sweeter
when you give them what they want.

That is, unless you don’t
give them what they want.

It is important to note that many great books have ended
this way. There is a place for it. But it is also something that needs to be
used wisely.

In the case of the town crushing giant, it was a mistake. The
benefit of the year long walk was that feeling of relief at the end, but it, in
itself, had no merit. He taught us quickly that if we worked really hard, dealt
with the agony (of boredom) and kept working towards our goals, we would get…
huge disappointment.

If the rest of the story had been enjoyable—the reader’s
frustrated because the characters aren’t together, but there’s a hell of a lot
of action sequences and humor to keep us entertained—it might have been okay.
We would have still had something left to “live for.” But when our only life
was about the goal, and he established that he was never going to give us what
we wanted, there was no point in playing.

Having a good balance of satisfying and frustrating the
audience leads to the widest variety of feelings, having a bad balance of being
too giving or too withholding makes no one care.

3. Metagame physics.

Sometimes it makes sense to split treasure loot outside of
the game. Sometimes it can be the best way to avoid arguments if we discuss
plans with players whose characters are technically in another room. Sometimes
looking up items to buy instead of asking what the shop keep has saves time and
the DM’s mind. Yet, on the whole, metagaming is no fun.

The Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook describes
metagaming as the players making decisions with knowledge that they are playing
a game. The example it uses is something like, the characters come to a portion
of the dungeon where there is no clear path to go onward. Metagaming is where
the players say, “Well, there has to be a lever somewhere because the DM
wouldn’t have this end as a dead end,” versus saying, “There has to be a lever
because the gnomes who made this wouldn’t have it as a dead end.”

Metagaming takes out the imagination of the world, and it
was something that not only did the DM do, but encouraged. Mostly when it
benefitted him. When a player would try to explain his actions by saying, “But
my character doesn’t know that,” he would respond with, “But you do.”

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

There’s a lot of ways that metagaming (metareading or metathinking)
can affect a book, the most obvious being the narrator talking like it’s a
fiction book.

“I can’t die! I’m the main character and we’re only two
pages in!”

It can also be in the way a character makes decisions. If we
were to take, for example, the ending scene from Captain American, we would see
him careening down to the Arctic, about to crash land into a pile of ice where
he will be frozen in time until he can be brought back in the future (i.e.
today) for the purpose of being a part of The
Avengers.

Of course, he knew nothing of this. All he knew was that the
plane would blow up, possibly killing millions, and his only plan was for it
crash in an uninhabited area. After setting all of this up, he sat there and
had a sad conversation with his girlfriend on the other side.

My problem? He behaved like he knew it was hopeless.

In any other hero movie in which the writer, the audience,
and the fans don’t know that the
character is fated to die, or rather, know he isn’t going to die, the ending is
very similar with one little difference: when all looks hopeless, they keep
trying to fix it. Until the last minute they are rushing around, ignoring the
ticking clock, pulling out wires and jumping in refrigerators, and finding some way to survive.

Captain America was not going to survive. Or, at least, he
had to be frozen. And he acted like he knew it.

When the author knows what is going to happen, he will often
telegraph it through the character’s behavior. Characters who are going to die
suddenly get mean. The character is going to succeed, so he keeps trying. The
character is going to fail, so he doesn’t try. The characters are going to end
up together, so they get into a fight, etc.

It’s hard to prevent this because we often aren’t aware
we’re doing it. Yet, like Dungeons and Dragons, metagaming is not as much fun
as playing pretend, and, though there are benefits to knowing how things are
going to turn out, it is much more believable if the characters don’t project
it without their knowledge.

4. Reader’s goals are
important.

As in the scenario with the year-long walk, players have
goals of their own. The more goals they have, the better and the more fun it is
for them.

In my late group, each time we came up with a goal, the DM
would actively try to destroy it. We’d want to get vengeance, he’d have an NPC
kill the villain instead. We’d want to be a thief, he’d have NPCs magically
know when we stole and decide to give money to the other players. We’d want to
build a house, he’d hand us one. Or destroy it. But, as with the walk, if we
don’t have a goal that we don’t think we’re going to get, we don’t care.

HOW THIS AFFECTS WRITING

Readers have goals too. Yes, they are different than a
player’s, being that they have no real control over what happens, but they do
want certain events to transpire.

They’re usually very simple. In Twilight we want Edward and Bella to get together, in a Mousetrap we want to find out who is the
murderer (and we want it to be the person that we thought it to be), in Taken we want to see the evil kidnappers
butchered—as well as some sort of punishment for the idiotic friend—and in The Pursuit of Happyness we want to see
Will Smith becomes successful.

Now whether or not a singular individual actually cares
about any of those things is a different matter. Why someone does or doesn’t
care about the high school love story of a sparkling vampire and his klutz is
an important and interesting matter for the writer, but irrelevant on this
point. The important thing is that people who don’t care—who don’t have any
personal goals—don’t like the book. Those who do, do.

5. The importance of
basic knowledge.

To describe Mr. DM as ignorant would be an insult to anyone
who’s ever lived under a rock.

There are several instances that makes his naivety laughable
(how voting works) and more that are just plain scary (how conception happens),
but, for the sake of time, I’m only going to elaborate on one.

Everything quantifiable was “the biggest thing ever.”

In the normal DnD (3.5) you’re not supposed to surpass level
30. In fact, in some versions, as soon as a character hits level 30, he becomes
godlike and ascends to heaven.

The last game I played I was level 93. My then boyfriend who
had “double-class” was considered level 188.

This need for “big” (which I believe resides precisely in
Freudian rational) affected every aspect of his stories, including the size of
the planet we were on.

The planet had a circumference of 1 billion miles. To just
illustrate this picture, the earth is 25,000 miles around. Let’s put that into
numbers.

Imaginary-1,000,000,000

Earth- 25,000

Sun- 435,000

So of course the question of gravity came up.

Now it took a while because no one was trying to hurt the
game, but it was a really big problem. Not just because he was making a hostile
audience out of us, but because it was completely hard to believe and conceive.

And when we finally asked about gravity, he just ignored it,
saying it didn’t matter. But it did matter, because the whole thing reeked of a
child stating the biggest number he could think of.

His games had a hell of a lot of
continuity breaks because he was completely naïve when it came to biology,
physics, and life in general. He always wanted things to be the amazing and
didn’t care for any ramifications or research.

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

His naivety is not that unusual. I
had to look up how big earth was; I didn’t even have enough of a clue to guess.
When it comes to a lot of aspects of life, we don’t know much. But the writer
needs to know what he’s talking about if he wants the reader to feel safe in
his hands. People do not need to know the answer to know if you are wrong. Your
only real job is to look like you’re not making things up.

Now, again, in Dungeons and
Dragons he had a little bit of leeway because it is mostly improvisation, yet
he didn’t have to tell us how big the world it was; he decided it. He didn’t
think it was important to know the actually size of earth because he just
wanted it bigger than Earth.

And hey, it’s fiction, an author
can make whatever he wants as long as he sticks to his rules.

Except a good book is a convincing
book. It might be completely irrelevant that the planet is big and has no
additional gravitational force, but it’s still going to bother the hell out of
the readers. Something like that sounds like a child telling a story, saying,
“He’s the strongest man in the universe! He’s a gazillion times stronger than
Hercules!”

One of the things a writer has to
deal with is that readers will reject something without knowing why. They don’t
always give the benefit of the doubt, even if they want to. It is very common
for them to not believe something and yet not be able to say what is wrong with
it.

Details are extremely important in
being convincing, and being convincing is extremely important in drawing people
into your world. They may be able to get passed the fact that you didn’t
consider your giant planet would crush people with the gravitational force, but
it still doesn’t mean they won’t think you’re an idiot.

6. Moderating the
death toll.

On this same point, moderation is everything. It was typical
for him to claim wars had killed trillions of people.

Not only is this unconceivable (there’s only seven billion
people on Earth right now), but unfathomable. It sounds made up, and the more
it sounds made up, the less people take it seriously.

HOW THIS AFFECTS WRITING

Having large numbers like this has the same problem of
telling instead of showing. Instead of making us feel something by word choice
and events, he’d just express the horrors in the most obvious way possible. “A
lot of people are dead. You should care.”

There’s a psychological theory that the more people there
are in a tragedy, the less it influences us. Sure we care when a war
slaughtered two trillion people, but, to us, it’s the same as a billion people,
or a million people, or even 1,528 people. Not, of course, when I am comparing
them side by side, but if I were to write a story about a battle that took the
lives of 2,000 warriors, the picture is the same as if I said 4,000.

Moderation of death makes death more meaningful. Proximity
also helps. The death of Spock is more horrible then the death of five
redshirts.

Trying to get people to care takes talent outside of plain
events. Authors (or DMs) will try to play our heartstrings by murdering people,
but doing so more often reads as trying too hard.

7. Moderating powers.

Mr. DM tried to make us happy. But, unfortunately, he tried
to make us happy in a way that would prevent us from actually having control in
the game. He did so by giving us ridiculous powers, calling it “power gaming,”
and then finding elaborate ways to make those powers mean nothing.

Why were we three times the level we were supposed to be?
Because every time we got disheartened, he gave us Experience Points. He
combated that by making every NPC five times the level they were supposed to
be.

This immediately became an issue. Items stopped meaning
anything, so people started hording their money, which made story conflicts too
easily solved. “We have to sail across this sea? Well, I have a million gold.
I’ll buy a boat.” He gave us powers like teleporting, but then had to deal with
us teleporting. He solved these problems by having a huge shift in economy
(“Well the only boats they have cost a billion gold.”) and just removing the
ability to teleport where ever we went, which meant the power was completely
useless.

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

If your character can teleport, how do you stop them from
just teleporting away when crisis arises? Of course, the author can take a card
from Mr. DM, but that’s rarely the best solution. Just saying, “You can’t,” is
irritating and frustrating, not to mention a cop out.

It can be used to the author’s advantage, having the
character not able to teleport until he finally smashes the item that stops
him, leading to that satisfaction that we discussed earlier. But, the author can
only do it a few times before readers catch on.

I can’t imagine writing for Superman for this very reason.
He is practically invincible until he’s practically dead. Giving the character
too much power makes it hard to have a reasonable challenge, and removing all
his power still doesn’t solve the problem.

8. Falling in love with
the wrong character.

Mr. DM had a hard time separating characters from players.
Whenever we actually did “play our characters,” such as pretending to go
through a grieving period, getting mad at someone, or picking an inane trait (I
was a pixie obsessed with shiny things), he did not understand that we were
playing and thought that we were metagaming. He’d wonder why we were really mad,
wondered how we were trying to manipulate him, and do his best to get us to
stop doing anything that might ruin his game.

It was worse, however, with him. As I said before, his
“playing the character,” meant “having no self-control.” Because he did not
fully understand the pretending part (possibly because it didn’t want to), he
could not separate himself from his characters. He was his character, there was no pretend about it. This is a problem
when he is controlling every NPC in sight.

The majority (and by majority, I mean all but a few
accidents) we tied every battle. He would, abiding by his “big” demands, have a
battle with an infinite number of orcs, and several high level NPCs on each
side. We would fight until he got bored and then one side (or both) would run
away, nothing changing.

See, no one could win, because either way he was losing. If
we beat the villains, we beat the DM. If the villains beat us, the DM beat the
DM. He fell in love with each of his characters which made it a problem every
time they were a useless jackass.

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

Falling in love with any character is a problem in itself.
However, the reason why I say “wrong” is that DnD specifically taught me the
downfalls of siding with the character your audience isn’t.

Now, I’m not talking about motivation and understanding
unlikable characters. Seeing the point of view of the enemy is an important
part of a well-rounded story. When I say fall in love, I mean when the author
is obsessive about a character the readers don’t root for.

Like actually being in love, writers tend to give gifts to
the characters they admire, whether it be in the form of actual items, abilities,
or luck. And it reads like that’s what they’re doing. We can get away with it
better when it’s the protagonist. When the audience likes the character, they
don’t mind as much. (Although, too much favoritism will become obvious and
unconvincing. It is helpful to notice when falling in love with a character
that the others aren’t because they will immediately turn on him.)

9. Maintaining house
rules.

The worst part of the game was the constant rule bending.
One minute we could spend three million gold without ramification, the next be
asked, “How are you carrying that?”

Now we could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he
just forgot, but remember, there is a specific pattern here. He constantly
changed the rules to tell the players they couldn’t do something.

“House rules” or what I’m now calling “anything that the DM
thinks he can change” are rules that vary from group to group. Constantly
changing them when it suits destroys the believability of the world, especially
when someone changes them to fit his needs.

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

In fiction, there are universal rules for things, whether it
be the law of gravity or that vampires can’t come out in the day. By universal,
I don’t mean absolute. There are just general rules and assumptions that people
(at least those who know anything about the topic) just default to unless told
otherwise.

These universal rules are up for breaking. If the characters
were to, say, explain that they didn’t need air in outer space because they had
special implants in their lungs, then fine. Most people would accept that.

The house rules, however, are not so easily changeable.
These rules, being anything that the house has decided is a rule, cannot be
broken without good cause. An assumed, pre-existing rule might change to make
your world different or to fit in with your vision of the world, not necessarily
to benefit you. But if you’ve established that’s how your world is to change
it, it ruins the reality of things and makes you untrustworthy.

10. Stealing ideas is
introducing competition for yourself.

Mr. DM introduced a detective. He smoked a pipe and looked
like Robert Downy Jr. In the act of trying to describe him, he spent a long
moment “thinking” as to what actor would be most similar in appearance. “But
not like in Tropic Thunder,” he said
pointedly.

The most innocent of us then turned and said, “Sort of like Sherlock
Holmes?”

And he pretended to be surprised at the perfection of it.

We met Sherlock Holmes, Hercules, most of the X-Men (all by
different names of course), the Greek gods, and pretty much anyone from a movie
he’d seen recently.

One of Mr. DM’s talents was characterization. And I say that
sincerely. Though he had trouble getting into the minds of his characters, he
had no problem getting into their bodies. He was a good actor, and fun to
watch. Except, and here comes the underlying problem, he was no Robert Downy
Jr.

Not only did stealing ideas from other places make believing
in his world even harder, but it also made him “follow their act.” Little
problems with atmosphere and details became a hell of a lot more apparent. Even
perfectly fine choices were wrong when they were trying to embody a previous
idea.

Now I’m not entirely booing the use of other ideas. It is
not only impossible to be completely original, but unnecessary. If an author
writes for fun (and all authors who actually manage to write write for fun) then
to refuse the use of ideas that inspired him diminishes the enjoyment he can
actually have.

But there is a difference between using another idea and
stealing it.

If Mr. DM loved Sherlock Holmes so much, he could have
easily figured out the why, kept the basics, fix the mistakes, and made it his
own. We love how Holmes is cocky, passionate about his work, and does not care
about the means so long as he gets the ends he wants. We might even like the
time period or the career. But even if you were to take a whole lot of things
you could end up with a whole new story. House
is a great television show for a reason.

HOW IT AFFECTS WRITING

I’d argue stealing ideas is much more tolerable in DnD than
it is in a novel because Dungeons and Dragons is just for fun and on the spot.
However, blatant character and concept snatching is something that takes an
expert to pull off.

For regular writing, you want to be much more careful of plagiarism,
not just because people hold you to a higher standard when you’re holding their
hearts in your hands, but because when people know exactly what you’re trying
to do, it’ll become much more obvious that you’re not doing it.

Dungeons and Dragons is a great game for any writer to try
out, especially when interested in fantasy. That sort of unrestricted improv
allows for the author to really sort through his ideas fast, thoroughly, and
get reaction from readers without having to deal with any sort of agent.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll be free of angry
critics, but you do learn a lot.

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Monday, August 15, 2016

I’m a territorial person. I like to bark at
strangers who pass by, hide in my room when guests arrive, pee on things to
mark them. You know.

Mostly, I feel most comfortable in “my” space.
I suppose one of the reasons the Jackson Hole Writers Conference was less
intimidating this year was because I knew the location, I’d attended the event
several times, and I probably knew more people than most of my fellow writers.

Today I have no space. After leaving Australia,
I camped out in my parents’ house for the summer in hopes to rebuild my savings
before moving on again. Planning to leave in a few months makes it hard to
settle, much more so when you consider the fact that I don’t actually have a
bed right now. I’ve been staying in the R.V., the couch, and sometimes my
brother’s room, depending on what was available to me at the time.

Even if I did have a place of my own where I
could stash my stuff without fear of the gremlins shifting it about, moving,
and preparation of moving, stresses me out beyond all belief.

I actually have more people to talk to this
time around—all my high school friends having run off to oblivion, yet I like
my coworkers—but I’m still holding back to attachment with anything. People,
places, things. Everything will probably go, and I’m still left with the
feeling I have nothing. I have my projects, and that’s about it.

The stress of living in a foreign country
without truly trusting what my future would hold is gone. Work is fantastic,
the nagging problems of potential mistakes have disappeared, and I feel a lot
freer than I did even four months ago.

But I don’t seem to like anything.

Supernatural
has been holding my attention decently, but not to the extent where I can pay
all of my attention to it. In fact, I remember the oddity of an episode coming
on and me thinking, “Wait, I actually want to hear what happens!” rather than
just leaving it on for background noise.

Videogames don’t excite me. Books are pains to
get through. Conversations, prospects of dating, future trips… Finishing some
sewing projects have done better for me, but if I’m not absorbing myself in
work or creativity, I struggle with caring about something. And most of my
projects—the webcomic, the quilts, the painting—allow for a lot of thought
while working, which seems to pull me back into the negative. And, unlike most
writers, when I get angry or miserable, it doesn’t inspire my creativity, just
makes it impossible to focus.

A few weeks ago I had a guy harass me in the
typical obtuse manner. He wasn’t mean, just unrelenting, putting me in the
awful position of trying to say no in a polite but clear manner. But when
someone doesn’t want to understand something, they won’t, and even after he
firmly was told I was uncomfortable, he merely apologized before continuing to
behave in the same manner. I tried ignoring him, but it only led to late-night
calls. Not even booty calls. The one time I answered, he asked to take me to
dinner later that week. You couldn’t have waited until daylight? I ended up
having to bluntly state that he had proven incapable of respecting my
boundaries, to which he told me he understood. Then he argued with me.

I ignored him after that. The point seems to
have been made, and I hope for his sake it has because I’m not sure I can play
nice the next run around.

But I’m furious. I am angry at the way he made
me feel, the constant pressure he put on me to “decide” if I liked him or not,
the overzealous interpretation of any acceptance as affection, and the refusal
to listen to anything I said. I felt helpless. I could either be an
asshole—ignore him, perhaps tell him off—or I could play nice and be forced to
be in more uncomfortable situations in which, despite his claims there were no
expectations, I knew would cross the line the longer it went on. When I tried
to tell the polite aspects of the truth—we had nothing in common—he tried to
deny my reality and make it look like I was insane for being offended when he
claimed, he “hadn’t thought that far ahead.” Like I was the nutjob for
considering our compatibility so soon.

I could tell you hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Your abundant crushes on every woman who walks the Earth is apparent to anyone
in the same room as you. This not really giving a shit about who I actually am
or your complete lack of vetting girls before choosing? Anyone who’s hot and
willing, huh? Not attractive. Way to make me feel special.

I spent all day angrily running my mind through
the things I could have said to him, how I could have responded as he acted like
we were just “speaking a different language.”

A lot of my thoughts were insults. I felt
inhibited by my need to take the higher ground and not point out that brushing
your teeth is a good way to show a stranger you care. I felt helpless knowing
he would argue with any of the obvious but unprovable speculations about his
intentions. He’d deny any interest in me the second he found I didn’t feel the
same way, and how do you turn down someone who won’t admit they’re asking you
out? And you’d think you wouldn’t have
to state his intentions, that you just say no, he’d argue it wasn’t what he’s
doing, and you say, “Oh. Okay,” then go on your way. But it’s like they think
they’ve tricked you or something, like, “She believes that I wasn’t hitting on
her. Now’s my chance!”: “So do you want to go still?”

NO.

And they will
try to kiss you if you do agree, as if your inability to tell them to fuck
themselves (because you don’t want to embarrass or hurt them) is the same thing
as changing your mind.

Even though it was over, I kept thinking about
it. I hate being angry. I hate the negativity.

I’ve realized over time that pain is important.
It’s a warning sign, it helps you predict future problems, and running over
situations in your head again and again teach you how to better react the next
time around. But sometimes you just need to let go. Live in the moment. I don’t
know how to do that.

I was trying to go with the flow when I let him
text himself from my phone. “I don’t like him, but does that really mean I need
to shut him down immediately? Nah. Just live day by day.”

Yes, Charley. There’s a reason rejecting him immediately
was your first instinct.

I consider myself a negative person, but an
optimist at the same time. I may see the glass as half-empty, but I never fear
being able to get more water. I truly believe things will end well, everything
happens for a reason (even if that reason isn’t for your benefit), and I don’t mind seeing the flaws and puzzling out
solutions.

But I’d like to let go of some of my anger. I’d
like to think about good things. I’d like to feel joy more often. I’d like to
get excited about television and books again. Mostly, I’d like to let things
stop bothering me, stop worrying about the future, and tell a jackass off once
and leave it at that. A coworker asks me often if I’m happy. I always say no.

“Why not?”

I shrug. I haven’t been happy in a long time.
But I would like to be.

From now on I am going to…

1. Name two positives for every one negative
thought I have.

2. Carry a water bottle because hydration
benefits mood.

3. Snap a rubber band on my wrist every time I
start to think of past conflicts.

4. Create a personal space in my current
residence.

5. Find positive stand-up comedians (then judge
them.)

6. Spend at least an hour out in the sunlight.

7. Do something outside my house each week.

8. Get my cat to forgive me.

I do believe that being angry is a choice, but I
think that you have to replace it with something. I strongly hope I can find
what that is.

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Friday, August 12, 2016

My answer is already no, before you think I’m
actually asking. But this is not a rhetorical question. Many of my friends and
peers have told me to write like someone else in hopes of obtaining their
success, and I’m curious as to the diversity of reactions authors give. How many writers would abandon their voice if they could write better with someone else's?

Even if I love someone, it doesn’t mean I want
to write like them. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, but he prefers
urban and contemporary fantasy—supernatural that takes place in the real world,
magic that almost could exist—and I much rather read about secondary-worlds and
alternative universes, completely new cultures and laws of physics. I wouldn’t
change anything about his writing as a reader—I am enamored with him as a
reader—but if they were my manuscripts I’d written, there would definitely be
different directions I’d want to go in, just because that’s who I am. Because my work represents me. It's not about only about affecting people, it's about affecting them in certain ways.

I get told to do things like George R.R. Martin
a lot. While I am impressed with his writing and enjoy his books, his choices
are so drastically against what I want to be writing I can only feel belittled when
someone suggests his way is the best. And regardless of what I do, I don’t want anyone else to write like him either; in some ways his
choices are successful because few others were doing the same. Personally, I’m
starting to get sick of things where everyone dies, where trauma follows drama,
where no one is ever happy. It’s great on occasion, but not every time. Not
every fantasy book needs to be A Game of
Thrones, and I don’t see the benefit of trying to homogenize them. I read
Martin to read Martin, Gaiman for Gaiman, Rowling for Rowling, Rothfuss for
Rothfuss.

In one case, I was told to write a prologue
like George R.R. Martin, but found the criticisms given to mine could easily be
said for A Game of Thrones’ as well.
I felt like the critic was pushing the book’s reputation without thinking about
what Martin had really been doing, without thinking what I was doing. He just
assumed Martin was a better writer than me and by mimicking his choices, I’d
improve. It doesn’t work like that.

The other day, I was working on a query letter
and sent it to a friend of mine. He discussed the in-skimability of it, (is too a word) and gave some good reasons
why it wasn’t as catching as it could be. It had been demoralizing considering
I had written over ten completely different queries and kept returning to the
third, but I saw his point and decided to make another version. As I worked and
reworked the first sentence my eyes started to bleed and I couldn’t understand
what I had written.

I sent another friend a text, asking, “Does
this make any fucking sense to you?”

“Um… no.”

Back to the drawing board.

But she didn’t leave it at that. My friend, who
I had long worked with creatively, who very well knew my feelings about, “Just
write like…” criticism, told me, “Why don’t you try writing like Hemingway?”

Hmmm… Why don’t I just try writing like a
writer that every college student has tried and failed to write like since the
1960s? I’ll get right on it.

Why don’t I just try to write like a writer who
I’ve expressed a distaste for since you first started obsessing over him?

Why don’t I just try to write like a writer notorious
for exposing great emotion through extensive description of inane objects and
dialogue in the real world when I am trying to excite people by a single
sentence summation of a completely fabricated world?

Hemingway is not the first writer I’d ask to
help me pitch a science-fiction novel. I have to wonder if you had any other more specific authors in your arsenal. When telling me to write like someone else, how many other writers do you know about?

I respect him, I wouldn’t change what he’s
done, but I’m not a fan. Fact is, even if I could emulate his style to a
wondrous success, I wouldn’t. Not just because I want my own unique voice, but
because I wouldn’t enjoy reading my own writing, I wouldn’t be satisfied with
it, I wouldn’t like it period.

As much as fame and acceptance in the literary
community would be nice—although, Hemingway has his share of critics—restricting
myself to being simplistic because it’s impressive is just as much selling-out
as begrudgingly writing a romance novel when you really want to be doing poetry.

Admittedly, I felt a little betrayed. I had
asked her opinion because I respected it, she gave me the answer I needed, but
then proceed to admonish me for the choices I made. I don’t know how she
expected me to react to her statement; I had talked to her extensively about my
main distaste for Hemingway has to do with the teary-eyed gushing of his fans,
the insistence that his way is the only way. Despite that no one can mimic him
without looking like that’s exactly what they’re doing, despite that he is the
only one who has managed to write like him and get away with it (which suggests
to me Hemingway’s success is the sum of his parts and cannot be emulated in
pieces), I get told constantly that I should write like him. People
ignore what I’m doing to spout off easy writing rules. They give me simplistic
and often poor solutions for problems they haven’t thought through.

Why write like a writer you don’t enjoy
reading? How could you do it well? It could also, possibly, propagate a shallow lie. Not
necessarily in Hemingway’s case, but when a population starts to think a
certain way, people who disagree need to voice their opinion to better
encourage the truth. You’re more inclined to understand why the art works for
some and not others, and if it’s a case of people just agreeing to fit in, the truth is more likely to come out after someone voices their disagreement.

People love studies about making an elephant’s
painting a centerfold in an art exhibit, hearing all the fancy-pants critics
pass adoring praises on the creator’s genius—the intention of the stroke, the
conceptual meaning. The art world is rife with bullshit, and I think it’s the responsibility
of every artist to take his own tastes seriously. Participating in something we
don’t actively enjoy diminishes the opinions those who do like it, and wonks
with our B.S. detectors.

I asked a while back if you could have the
acclaim, the financing, the artistic freedom, and fan-base of E.L. James or
Stephenie Meyer, but despised and trivialized at the same time, would you? Most answers obsessed over how those specific writers deserved it because they just
were terrible, but the real question for me was if I could affect someone strongly in the intended way while alienating others, would that be preferable?

What kinds of writers do I really want to be like?

I know that Hemingway is not the kind of
writing I want to be doing. Truth is, I’d love to be able to capture an emotion
in an everyday moment like he does; I think he is a skilled and masterful
author who does shocking things and makes it seem easy. But wanting his ability
doesn’t mean I would use it in the same way. I am not a manly man. I’ve never
been to war. I didn’t live post-war 1950s, didn't experience same cultures, the same problems, the same existential crises. I don’t have a larger-than-life
persona. I’m not adventurous. Not a fan of the outdoors. I didn’t have a start
in journalism. I have a vastly different view of the world, different
interests, different desires, opinions, and personality. I am different than him, so it makes sense I wouldn't write like him.

It’s not to say we can’t learn from authors of
all genres, or that I can’t apply any of Hemingway’s style to my own. But it is asking that when talking to writers, be careful of telling them to “just write
like BLANK.” It’s insulting to the greats, for one, implying that it’s easy. It’s disingenuous
to the individual, for another, telling them their own personality is a mistake
and unappealing. There is room for diversity in literature… a lot of room. So
when critiquing, there’s no reason to limit it to “Well, so-and-so doesn’t do
it that way, so you can’t.” We need
better reasons than shouldn’t. Personal reflection, reaction to the actual text
before you, and being open-minded to what can be leads to more organic, more
unique choices than to just try and copy someone else.

I love money. Fame would be nice, in moderation. Freedom brought by a good reputation would be excellent. But I write for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to express me, in my way, to my own satisfaction, and achieving success by being someone else doesn't interest me.

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People’s poor reaction to rejection is probably
the most universal experience in the human condition. You can learn to accept
it gracefully, it does get easier with time, but we all know what it’s like to
be hit with someone saying, “I don’t want you.” That makes it all the harder to
say it yourself.

Writers ask me all the time how to deal with
breaking the bad news to someone. How do we approach giving a bad review to a
person who asked to rate it? How do we give our friend or lover or mom
constructive criticism? How do we tell our cousin he can’t design the cover?
How do we tell a freelancer they didn’t get the job? When we hate getting
rejected ourselves, how can give it out? How would we like to hear it? Not at
all, really.

The lady in question offered up her
proofreading services some months back, contacting me via Facebook. At the
time, I was mulling over whether or not I wanted to hire an editor or
proofreader before submitting to agents, so I told her the truth: “My
manuscript isn’t ready for that stage yet, but I’ll keep you in mind.”

She kept in touch since then, which I consider
commendable. Had several factors gone differently, she made herself a
forerunner in my options.

Except…

When the work did start to get to the point
where I really starting to consider hiring a proofreader, I looked through her
portfolio—a list on online books she’d worked on—I was not impressed. The first
three had several errors early on. Subtle, nothing too distracting, but still
there. It was entirely possible that the writer didn’t take her advice, but at
that point, I don’t think it’s my job to do a second consideration for her if
she didn’t check. Truth is, most freelance editors out there are still
learning, starting their business with no professional experience.

That, for me, makes it more difficult to say
no. As someone who was never very good at looking credible and following
traditional paths, I respect those who do the same, and try and give them the
benefit of the doubt as I would want. I myself have learned grammar, editing,
and submission format from pure, unofficial practice and personal research.
After writing every day for more than a decade, I’ve gotten good at it, but I
don’t have the resume to show it. In fact, my writing resume is very thin
despite how much I claim to know. It would be doing a disservice to my people
to say, “You don’t have any experience in a publishing house, so you can’t possibly be good.”

I also knew, the more I read through this
manuscript, that it’ll get rejected for its adverbs before its grammar. I’ve
been working on it for years now, it’s in its eleventh draft, many people have
gone over it, and it’s pretty damn clean. Not perfectly so; I found yesterday a
weaker place, and I still come across some typos here or there—if I was
self-publishing I would hire a
proofreader. But, if I was self-publishing, I would hire a full-blown edit with
content and copy editing as well.

Paying for a proofreader now would be a lot of
work trying to find the right person and an excess expenditure that I think
don’t tackle the real reasons an agent would pass me up. I do decent work even
without a lot of polishing—my blogs undergo one or two reads before going up,
and so are a good example of about how many errors I make without meticulous
comb overs. If I got someone anal enough to say no to a typo on page
thirty-six, there’s a lot of writing rules I don’t strictly adhere to long
before that. I would argue my big words and confusing sentences are way more frequent. I would argue the
fact it’s dystopian right at the tale-end of a fad would be reason enough to
say, “NOPE.” So spending several hundred dollars polishing it just rang
foolish.

I knew she was going to contact me in August
because I informed her I had hoped to be done by then. Which is true, more or
less. I find now I want to do one more overhaul of a middle scene—one I’ve
always struggled with—but I’ve fixed all other important complaints I could do
on my own. It’s at the point where I need to put it out there. I’m confident in
it. There are obvious reasons it might not sell—mostly the whole genre
thing—but that, at least, will not lead me to that painful point of, “Rewrite,
resubmit, write something else?” I feel if it doesn’t do well in this form,
it’s just not marketable enough.

Lastly, I am also moving to New York City (I
know you’ve heard it before. But I’m avoiding boys right now; no last minute
fleeing to Australia for me this time) in October and need every penny I can
save.

I debated for a while what to tell her.

The Golden Rule is strange. How I want to be
treated very much depends on the context. Do I want someone to point out an
error? Do I want to be told why I’m
being rejected?

Sometimes no. I mean, in the case of being
turned down for jury duty, there’s no need for the insult. In situations that I
am not trying to improve myself, just attempting to have fun or help a person
out, sometimes I could do without the criticism. If I’m feeling sensitive, I
might prefer form letter rejections for my writing—it’s nothing personal.

But with something like this? Yeah, I’d
probably want to know that I got turned down because of a poor sample of my
work on my website.

On the other hand, I had to wonder how much of
it was on the offensive side. I’ve been rejecting people more and more in
recent years and I know how easy it is to get attacked for saying no. I could
feel a little bit of preemptive anger and couldn’t decide if perhaps saying,
“I’ve looked at BOOK and there were some errors. Can you describe what the
process of working with that author was like?” was a passive-aggressive attempt
to put her on the defense.

Moreover, I don’t need the argument. When I
looked through her work, it was months ago, and I don’t remember what the
errors were specifically. Grammar is such a fickle beast with several different
standards and flexibility, and arguing pedantics has always seemed like an
egotistical waste of time. The issue is I don’t trust her to fill in the
inadequacies of my own knowledge, and trust is a huge part of a successful
edit.

A woman sometime back eagerly asked to read this
manuscript for me. She was extremely sweet, quick, and dedicated. She also
didn’t know what she was talking about. Mainly, she questioned common stylistic
choices, like using a dash for an interruption. I found that a third of her
critiques were outright wrong, one third were debatable, and the rest were
correct, but often optional or controversial (like the oxford comma). Her best
criticisms tended to be small, meaning I had to shift through the “truth” of
each opinion for twenty minutes to find one “the” instead of “they.” I reluctantly
ended up disregarding all of the notes because when she pointed out something
that I had never really questioned, I couldn’t be sure that it was my mistake
or hers, and it wasn’t always something you could look up, usually more
abstract or subjective. I couldn’t trust her. I needed to spend too much time
doing my own research to know if I should take critique or not, and it wasn’t
yielding enough results to make it worthwhile.

If I’m going to fork over an arm and a leg for
an edit, I want to be able to trust that you know better than me.

I didn’t want to make an enemy. I didn’t want
to be insulted. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to defend herself. I
didn’t want there to be any question that the answer is no.

I also knew that saying, “I have decided I am
not going to hire a proofreader at this time,” would open me for attack. I
don’t believe in explaining yourself, especially unsolicited, because it
suggests insecurity in your choices and makes it easy to criticize. I chewed
over my words carefully and told her, “Hi! [My writing’s] going well. Right now
I've been considering my options and discussing things with people, and I've
decided it's not best for what I want with this manuscript to personally hire a
proofreader. I will think of you in the future though. Thank you!”

It’s true, if you’re wondering. If I consider
hiring a proofreader again, she will be the first to cross my mind; that’s the
power of self-promotion. I would just remind myself that I already passed her
up for a reason. I will also remember her response to my no.

I was not surprised at her answer. It was, more
or less, exactly what I was picturing. I was more miffed by the smiley face.

I find my life is a lot easier the more I
accept people are going to take rejection poorly, and instead do what I
consider right by both of us whether they like it or not.

What do you do when someone approaches you and
it’s not in your best interest?

-Be
clear the answer is no.

I’ve learned to use the actual words “sorry”
and/or “no.” Everything else can be misinterpreted. They, however, are pretty
harsh, so “will not” and “decided against” are good second choices.

-Don’t explain
too many reasons unless specifically asked.

Vagueness tends to result in acceptance. “It’s
not best...” can’t be argued with and doesn’t illicit an immediate question
other than a blanket why.

When a person solicits more reasons for your
decision, I think they deserve to understand what happened, but if they don’t,
I personally think it is better to take care of myself in that situation and
not needlessly borrow trouble.

-You can
make it about yourself to make it hurt less for them—but expect to be attacked.
Or you can make it about them, be more hurtful, but possibly help them and be
left alone. The right answer is different for each context.

Contrary to common sense, keeping your mouth
shut and being nice is somewhat of a selfish action. By continuing to be
polite, you are more likely to be abused, but are less likely to leave them
with a lingering hatred. They are far more likely to insult you once and not
come back than if you were rude back.

People use anger to soothe their emotional
pain. We are more likely to take it out on someone who won’t fight back as
well. If you’re dealing with an asshole who insults you first, you’re more
likely to back down out of self-preservation. If the person takes fault,
however, you’re more likely to agree.

Doing right by them could be conveying the full
truth of your decision, but that means you’re more likely to end up in some
drama. They’re more likely to be angry with you, to argue with you, and even go
out to start a feud, but they also will learn something from the experience and
be able to solve the problem for the future.

I often suggest in critiques to make it about
you to minimize hurt feelings—“I wasn’t rooting for the protagonist, and it’s
hard for me to invest in a book where I don’t want the main character’s
success.”—but that allows for them to write you off—It’s just you after all. In
a criticism of someone else’s work, it doesn’t matter because they’re the one
who it affects, and it’s likely that they will realize your point after mulling
it over for some time. But when it’s your
work and your decision, you don’t
always need to be criticized for your choices just because you don’t think
someone is best for the job, so you might decide not to make it about you—“I’m
not hiring a proofreader right now,”—and give them room to call you an idiot.

-Try to
remember you have the right to do best for you, and their anger isn’t personal.

Surprisingly, I feel obligated to take care of
people. I want to hire them. I want to explain my reasons for rejecting them. I
want them to do well. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was left feeling more
distraught than they were about the whole situation.

I’ve had to be the bad guy a lot lately, but it
does do one thing for me. The more I have to reject others, the more I realize
how impersonal it is. How they have to do right by them, and just because
working with you isn’t the best choice doesn’t mean they hate you, they look
down on you, they’re laughing at you, or they even think you’re bad at what you
do. Most times, I reject people because of personal reasons. I genuinely
decided against hiring a proofreader. I am not looking to date. I have a
different vision or different tastes.

I liked this proofreader. She was friendly. I
respected her bravery and work ethic. When I told her no, I didn’t see it as
rejection… until she criticized me with a smiley face.

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Friday, August 5, 2016

The winner of my H.G. Wells quilt is a young man by
the name of Chance. He has already been contacted and accepted the quilt.

Full-disclosure, Chance is a friend of mine who I
had to strong-arm into submitting. On one side, his winning is nice because I
don’t have to pay shipping. On the other, I prefer when people who I don’t know—as
in the last few giveaways—win because I feel it is more to the heart of the
giveaway.

I started these partially to self-promote, but also
because I like making things and don’t like having them around the house. It is
nice to be able to do something creative, have it go out into the world and not
have to look it anymore.

I am not surprised the quilt was won by someone I
knew. What I am more shocked about was the huge incongruence in the number of
hits on the post itself and the actual submissions. I won’t give numbers, but
when I say a grossly larger number of people visited the post versus those who
actually entered, I do mean gross.

It suggests to me something needs to be done
differently. Was the how to enter confusing? That has happened in the past in
which people thought they submitted and hadn’t. Was it that no one wanted to
commit to the social media requirements? Did people just not want to give me a
mailing address? Did they just want to look? Was I being skeezy?

I understand avoiding things irrationally like the
best of them, but I’m not positive why someone would be interested enough to
figure out what had to be done and then decide against it without reason.

For next giveaway, I’m going to add a “One Free
Entry” option and see if that changes things.

But the giveaway was not a bust. I didn’t get many Facebook likes or Twitter followers,
but I did receive some subscriptions to my newsletter and followers on my blog,
which was really want I wanted. So I call it a success.

It’s an expensive proposition, the quilts costing
anywhere from 60 dollars to 100 to make. It would be more effective to just
hand the money over to Facebook. However, I make the quilts because I love to
so the money really isn’t going towards promotion. And I feel the giveaway has
long-term potential. I like offering it.

For December’s quilt, I should be hopefully
settled after my move to New York in October, but who knows. I am going to try very
hard to stay on schedule now. Moves affect me more than I realized, and for
last January, being in Australia really threw me for a loop. I’m not sure I’ll
be able to find a solid place by then. I’m not sure what’s going to happen at
all. I’m pretty much winging it.

Next time, I plan not only on meeting my deadline,
but advertising the quilt prior to raffle days, and doing a better job of
preplanning the image. I’ll have some designs up first before even beginning to
sew.

If you are interested in having a quilt made of a
specific author or book, let me know through Twitter, Facebook, email, or even Instagram.
It must be in the public domain (or you hold the copyright), but other than
that I am open to all ideas.

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Monday, August 1, 2016

Watching
stand-up comedy to put me in the mood for better jokes. I’m still waiting for
it to kick in, but I have hopes. I’d take a seat if I were you though.

Unlike most
writers who pull from pain and misery, I work a great deal better when in a
euphoric state, which doesn’t happen very often. High energy makes my brain
move too fast for my overzealous censor and some weird shit comes out.

I pick up on
emotional energies around me, mimicking the attitude of someone I’m watching.
Another person can pump me up more than nicotine gum chewed by a non-smoker,
but it can also cause me to crash. Because I’ve been avoiding socialization—for
the very reason that other people have such a strong effect on me—I’ve been
wallowing in a stagnant, resentful exhaustion.

In the last few
months, I’ve been filled with anger. It wasn’t directed towards anyone
specific—although there have been a few men who tried to forcefully insert
themselves into my life at just the wrong time and got the full blunt
of it—just a feeling that lingered below all the others. The moment I got
tired, I lost my focus, or did anything that didn’t supersede my attention, all
my energy was sucked into finding some negative memory to rehash.

It took me a
while to figure out why I was doing it. I, of course, thought it was specific
to the situation I obsessed over. Why did I let them affect me so much? Then I
reconsidered the lowest common denominator. Truth was, I got mad every time I
got bored. I was getting angry because I didn’t know how else to entertain
myself. Among other reasons, obviously, but it came from a deep dissatisfaction
in new experiences. Which happened because I was avoiding new experiences.

I thought it was
strange that I exhausted myself with this feeling because I love my job, get
paid well, I get along with my coworkers and bosses, I am getting very excited
about what my book has become, and I’m looking forward to the future. I’m moving
to a new city in October, and should have an optimistic outlook.

But I can’t stop
seething with resentment. About nothing.

I’ve decided a
couple of things.

I will not feed
the beast. There are certain things that I know will incite rage in me. Dating,
right now, is a big one. Reading about relationships, gossiping about people
wronged, pouring over articles on stalking and Tinder… Having a doomed
relationship meet its expectation, I struggle not to shame myself for not
accepting it sooner.

There are some
topics or individuals that I intentionally seek out to get my blood boiling.
I’m going to knock that shit off now.

I’ll expect
happiness. Most of my favorite books, T.V. shows, movies, and other kinds
of stories were off putting, boring, uninspiring at first. Partially because it
takes some time for the information to become meaningful, partially because it
takes some time for it to hit its groove, but mostly because commitment and
faith are key to enjoying yourself. Having the expectation to like something,
to have fun, being positive all allows you to invest your emotions with greater
commitment, which always leads to a better payout.

Instead of being
generally pessimistic, I’m going to try to like things.

I’ll won’t
accept my exhaustion. I always blamed fatigue for… pretty much everything.
I don’t like the way I hold myself, I don’t like procrastinating. I don’t like
not being interesting. I just want to make people laugh. But I’m always too
tired.

Now that I work
at three a.m. and get home at one, I’ve actually started to feel more energized
than normal when awake. But I’ve been sleeping all of the time. Right now, as I
try to meet my daily requirements, I blame my inability to tell a good joke or
talk about something I actually care about from a ten-hour shift, but there’s
always excuses, aren’t there?

I’ve started
copying stand-up comedians’ movement. They always are putting on a show in each
nuance, their gestures specific, calculated, meaningful. My mind has always
separated itself from my body with a pretty distinct wall, and I’d describe my
physicality in one way: lazy. What’s the easiest method of getting from point A
to point B? A boyfriend once characterized my jaunt as a “Charlie Brown Walk.”

Accurate; I
never forgave him.

Today was the
first attempt at the formerly obnoxious advice of having a positive outlook,
but so far, so good. Maybe not from your standpoint, but that’s probably
because you’re a pessimist. I’m not allowed to be anymore.

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